"Sint Juliaan, the first experiments with gas"
Sint-Juliaan by Pavlik_NL

Sint Juliaan, or Saint Julien as the allied forces called this place, has gone into history as the place where for the first time on larger scale a gasattack was launched. On the 22th of April 1915 the Germans let out chloor-gas from a few dozain granates. The wind was "right" and let the gas thrive over the tranches of the Canadian division that was on the other side of no-man's land. In panic a retreat started, leaving 3.000 sufficating soldiers behind. Many others got defects for the rest of their live. The Germans however didn't find out the hole they created in the enemy line (they still didn't believe in successful warfare with gas). Eventually they only moved the frontline with a few hundred meters.

Sint Juliaan is now-a-days a small village with a surrounding that is mainly agricultural. Fields for growing of vegetables are stretching out 'til the horizon and on the junctions of roads keeping them apart you will again find many little chaples or crosses. A restored sight is the Steenakker windmill, that now gives a little smile back to the land that has suffered so much.